Talkeetna says no to city status

TALKEETNA -- Talkeetna voters rejected a plan to create a home-rule city 216 votes to 59 when mail-in ballots were counted Tuesday at the state Division of Elections office in Anchorage. Ballots can still be received up until March 29, but Tuesday's unofficial results were all but final. Talkeetna had a voter turnout of nearly 40 percent, with 277 out of a potential 697 of the city's registered voters casting ballots.

"I was surprised that it was so lopsided," said area resident Ruth Wood. "I don't know how many more votes are coming in, but that doesn't seem like a number that's going to change."

Wood is retiree who ran as a city council candidate on a ballot that accompanied the city status question. She was in favor of incorporation and has lived in Talkeetna since 1998. With 90 votes, she finished last out of nine candidates for a proposed six-seat council.

One of the would-be winners for the proposed government was pro-incorporation candidate William "Billy" Fitzgerald. In a race that is now moot, Fitzgerald beat anti-incorporation candidate Dennis Freeman 115 to 90.

Freeman was out of town and unavailable for comment this week. Fitzgerald said he did not help craft the proposed incorporation charter and he decided to run only after careful study of the document.

"I think that if people had read and studied the home-rule charter they would have voted for it -- it's a wonderful document," Fitzgerald said. "I found lots of points in there that I wanted to see in any type of city government that I would participate in."

Fitzgerald said he was surprised by the charter's landslide defeat, but not by the high voter turnout -- Talkeetnans may not like government, but they do like democracy.

"They [residents] like to vote, they like to let their opinion be known," Fitzgerald said. "And that's very good because it gives people in my position a clear understanding of where you're at in the eyes of your fellow citizens."

Talkeetna is usually among the borough's districts with a higher turnout in borough, state and federal elections, according to Fitzgerald. Records at the Mat-Su Borough clerk's office showed that in October 2000 -- the last ballot with a borough mayor's race on it -- the Talkeetna precinct was fourth in voter turnout with 28 percent.

Anti-incorporation council candidate Martin Terstegge said he thought early on that "no" votes would carry the day, but the debate was generally healthy for the community.

"It's brought out some people that haven't been involved as much as they could have been, and it's brought out some new faces too," Terstegge said.

"I've been saying all along that we do need control of our own destiny as [pro-incorporation campaigners] put it," Terstegge said. "The only problem I had with this last big push is that it was too much too soon … A lot of people that I talked to who voted no stated that if this were at a different level, maybe as second-class city, then they would have voted for it."

Currently the Mat-Su Borough is the closest thing Talkeetna has to a local government. Among the borough's responsibilities are road service, a public library, a sewer system, and a fire department.

Asked if the election could be interpreted as a vote of confidence in the Mat-Su Borough government, Fitzgerald said no.

"Absolutely not. This is a vote against another layer of government and in all of the anti-incorporation arenas the biggest objection is against having another layer of government," Fitzgerald said.

State law requires a two-year wait before a similar incorporation plan can be put forward. The last time Talkeetna had an incorporation election was in the early eighties. Another vote is likely, Fitzgerald said, and next time, Talkeetna will probably not wait so long between elections.

"The last one was '81, so that's 20 years, and I don't think 20 years is going to pass before we have another attempt to become a city," Fitzgerald said.

But Fitzgerald said it will take major changes to turn the political tide in Talkeetna -- and the example he pointed to wasn't a crime wave, sewage spill or school closing.

"It's obvious that it's going to be a real tough sell until something really drastic happens, like a McDonald's opening up in downtown," he said. "Then we'll all be scratching our heads trying to figure out what can be done."

According to division of election officials, 16 ballots were invalidated Tuesday night for various reasons.

"We had a few people who were registered outside the district, or weren't registered on time," said Carol Thompson, region two supervisor for the Division of Elections.

"Some [mail-in ballots] were not signed or not witnessed correctly," she said.